Element Context Menu Operations

You can perform a wide range of operations on element objects on a diagram, such as displaying an element's structural components, displaying or hiding its features on the diagram, and changing the element's appearance. You access these operations through the element context menu. If you are working under a technology such as SysML or BPMN, the menu can also provide options that are specific to that technology.

AccessRight-click on element on diagram

Element Context Menu Options

Option

Action

See also

Extensions

Select this option to access a submenu of enabled Technologies on the system (for example, ArcGIS or TOGAF), each of which provides options for performing technology-specific operations on the element.

This option is available in the Professional, Corporate and all Extended editions of Enterprise Architect.

Select this option to add attributes and/or operations to the element, through the 'Attributes' (F9) or 'Operations' (F10) pages of the 'Features' dialog, or to override any inherited attribute (Ctrl+Shift+R) values set on the element.

For an Object or State element you can add a new instance variable to the element using the 'Define Run State' dialog.

For elements that can have interfaces, you can also select to show realized and/or dependent interfaces (Ctrl+Shift+Y).

You also have the option of opening the 'Feature and Compartment Visibility' dialog to define which features and feature properties to display on the element, and which element compartments.

You can also synchronize Class elements from the source code via the Project Browser, and reverse engineer or forward engineer model Packages and code to synchronize them and incorporate changes made in one but not in the other.

View source code in the source code editor, on an element for which it has been generated, (Shortcut: F12)

On a Class for which code has been generated, prepare the Class for Execution Analysis by (Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+J):

Select this option to lock the element so it can't be edited; to unlock the element, select 'Lock Element' again.

This does not apply in the Corporate, Business and Software Engineering, Systems Engineering and Ultimate editions when security is enabled; in that situation, use the 'Lock' option for model elements.

Defaults to selected, so that the element is depicted in any diagrams in reports generated on its parent Package.

If you click on the option to deselect it, the element and its connectors will not be visible in any diagrams in reports. You can, however, deselect a report option for an instance of a report to force the display of non-printable elements.

Deselecting this option also hides the element and its connectors in the 'Print Diagrams', 'Print to PDF' and 'Save Diagram as Image' operations.

Context menus vary between element types; for example, the 'Code Engineering' option does not display for a Use Case element

If you select two or more elements at the same time, you can perform an operation on all of the selected elements at once; the operations available for multiple selection are provided on a separate context menu